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Last night we headed out to IKEA with Angelo and Josh. The only straight boys there were the ones being dragged around by their wives, hoping for a Denver Broncos lampshade but increasingly realizing they were out of luck. We saw a couple cute-boy couples there who looked like they were outfitting their first place together.

I didn't realize until right this second that Adrian and I are fixing up our FOURTH place together. Lordy, but we do move around a bit. We're like gypsies. Or Deadheads.

We weren't planing on doing much IKEA shopping for the new place, but I had mentioned it to Angelo the other day and he was excited about going, so off we went. Adrian has been leaning toward West Elm and Bo Concept for the new place, and the guys went with us last weekend while we looked around there, so we were certainly up for an IKEA trip with them. As it turned out we found a light fixture and a computer table that would go well in the condo, so we were happy, and we'll get them when we return. Angelo and Josh, being the wonderful gay boys they are, pretty much bought out the store.

It occurs to me that's the first time I've ever gone into IKEA and come out without buying something. But I suppose the fact we haven't actually moved to Washington yet might have something to do with that.

I got us all checked in with the condo office on Monday so we can get in and out without worrying about getting arrested. We have some work we want done before moving back here so Adrian will leave some keys with his brother-in-law and we should have a new floor by the time we get back.

Adrian's class finished up Monday but he's going to be leaving all the equipment for this new process in DC. He wants to practice before he starts charging people a couple thousand dollars for adding hair to their heads (he took a course on doing extensions) and he doesn't expect to have time for that in Colorado. I hope he has time when he returns to DC, that could be quite the moneymaker.

My own work stuff went well (since the trip was being paid for by work, I suppose that stuff was important too). I had some meetings Monday to get things together for a book I'm working on. Tuesday and today were meetings setting my institute's research agenda for the next year, and those went very well (almost made me sorry I won't be here anymore...almost). I talked with the fellow runing the trip to Moscow next month, and also with a professor whose class I'm covering next Tuesday night, so that was good, a little prep never hurt anyone.

At the moment I'm in San Antonio, just flew down here this afternoon. My boss and I have some meetings, then I'll fly home Friday night. Big change from DC...we're at a dumpy little Holiday Inn nowhere close to anything. It's Fiesta time here but my 60-something year old boss with health problems is in no mood to head downtown and I'm not really up for going by myself, so we'll see what happens. I expect to have limited Internet access for a couple days, so more to follow when I get home!

I don't know what it is, but after using an e-mail address to get set up on Blogger I started getting 5-10 spams a day in Japanese featuring links to (as near as I can tell) porn sites with Japanese ladies. I haven't actually hit any of these links, mind you, for that would be foolish, but if the accompanying photos are a guide, they are indeed links to Japanese lady porn. And I don't need to see this.

Isn't spam going to be tailored to the individual? Isn't that the fear that privacy advocates have had for years? Isn't that supposed to be the current state of spam?

And while we're at it, where's my individual rocket pack that we were all supposed to have by now?

I did carry Adrian over the threshold the other day, AFTER we spent 5 minutes trying to figure out how to unlock the door. He seems to like the place, which is good since he's an owner. Incidentally, does anyone want to guess why the key ring the old owners gave us looks like it would be a good belly button piercing for a 300-pound person? Seriously, this thing is something that would be used for a piercing, with the little screw-on ball on one end, but it's HUGE.

We spent Saturday checking out furniture with Angelo and Josh, and found some nice stuff at West Elm and Bo Concept, stuff that will actually fit our post-house-sale budget, provided we don't have to pay for major repairs after the home inspector visits our house this week. That night we called it quits around 9, we were pretty beat. Sunday Adrian had class, then I went and measured the rooms in the condo and hit Homo Depot for paint swatches, then went off to lunch with Dancin' Mike, whom I hadn't seen in 2 years (which is roughly 1 year and 364 days too long!). He had a rough time of it earlier this year but he seems to be doing better now, and he is moving forward with a number of interesting career prospects, so good for him! Most importantly, he is still dancing professionally when the opportunity arises (he had a 6-hour rehearsal after lunch, actually) and he also didn't run screaming when I raised the possibility of maybe continuing my dance education with him as a teacher when we move here. We'll see how he feels about it after he's thought it over a bit. :P

After checking out some more furniture options I met Adrian after his class and we had dinner with our friends Sean and Alabama Mike (I know so many Michaels I have to give them nicknames, though he might not like that one even though Alabama is where we met so it seems appropriate). A good time was had by all, especially once we learned they just installed their hot tub. We expect to house sit for them once we get here...even if they aren't gone.

My meetings changed around this morning but I still had plenty to keep my busy while Adrian had class. After lunch with Arlington Michael (who now lives in DC, but I'm not changing his name) I got us registered with the condo complex, so we are now real residents even though we don't reside there yet.

And now we're laying here tired...I swear, we are so old sometimes. The next two days will be pretty busy for me, but at least Adrian is done with his class. More furniture and socializing are on the way!!

The Colorado house is under contract, at the full price that we were asking. So yay that, because now we can live there again without worrying about getting the phone call that says "there are people coming to look at your house, GET OUT!!!!!"

OK, they didn't scream at us, but still, it was nerve-wracking. I hear people talk about their house being on the market for months, ours was only for sale a week. I don't see how those people do it.

Speaking of houses, we're in DC at the moment, and within an hour Adrian will be seeing our new home for the first time. He doesn't know it, but I intend to carry him over the threshold.

Work's been beating me up but that's ok, as long as they keep paying for the privilege.

We're about to head out Friday to DC (then I'm on to San Antonio at the end of the week) for a combination of work and fixing up the new place. I would write more about that but I'm too tired to type.

I saw a fox running through downtown last night. That was weird.

And what is it with workers who say they're coming to your house and then never show? Two days in a row, mind you. Bastard.

I'm sitting in a coffee house right now as strangers walk through my home. This is getting old already -- I can't imagine how people have their homes on the market for weeks or months -- but it should be over soon. The folks who gave us the conditional offer are about to have to make a decision whether they want to commit or not because I just got off the phone with the realtor and he says we're getting at least one more offer today and maybe as many as three. Bear in mind, the house has been on the market less than a week. Hopefully by the end of this week we will have a firm offer and we can quit showing the house.

Both Adrian and I have now had a case of being home when a real estate agent shows up with potential buyers. Awkward.

Not much else is going on this week. We've been out to dinner a couple times, taking this forced expulsion from our home as a chance to try new restaurants. I had dance class last night and I felt like I was really awful, but my coach says she was giving me advanced moves. Or maybe she's just trying to make me feel better. Anyway, between traveling and moving we only have 3 classes left together, so I've only got that long to get good enough to be a backup dancer in a music video. Better get to practicing.

After about 48 hours on the market we have an offer on the house. It's a full price offer but it's contingent on the buyer selling their home. There are some advantages to this offer -- for instance, it allows me to continue marketing the house in case a better offer comes along, and I've already used the existence of this offer to encourage another potential buyer to raise their price. Anyway, we have a proposal, we're making a counterproposal (just changing some dates by which things need to be done) and we should have a better idea Monday where we stand. Keep your fingers crossed!!

This is about the laziest day I've had in a while (well, except for getting up at 7:30 to prep the house, then watching the clock nervously as the plumber finished up a valve replacement 15 minutes before people came to look at the house). We've got 3 viewings of the house scheduled so far today, so it's not like we'll be doing any work around there. In fact, we need to be out of it. And while I doubt the house will sell on the first day, we can always hope.

I do have some stuff to work on for classes on Monday, but I think I can wait until tomorrow to do that. Today, I'm getting a massage and body scrub. Much more fun, and something I usually can't do in the classroom. Usually.

Thursday afternoon I got a real surprise. In the middle of the afternoon I got a call from one of my best friends from university, who lives on the east coast but who was in town for a day for meetings. I haven't seen him in seven years -- we often end up in the same places but just miss each other by a couple weeks. So Thursday night we went out for a few hours (by the time I got him back to the hotel he had 3 hours before he had to get up to go to the airport...I, on the other hand, got at least 5 hours of sleep). He's married with two kids, and I've known his wife exactly one week less than I've known him (they were college sweethearts) so there was lots of catching up to do. We've known each other more than 20 years and he's a good guy, but it's interesting to see that even though we've gone into similar lines of work (we actually worked together for 5 years after university) our lives have taken different paths and we've grown in different ways. For example, he, as a parent, has different views on education than me, a professor who deals with students who've come through that education process. He sees younger people ("this generation," as he calls them) with a suspicious eye, whereas I, who am lucky enough to have a number of younger friends, see their potential. His political views are more conservative than mine, and more conservative than they were befoe, which shouldn't be too surprising given that I'm more liberal now than I used to be (coming out has that effect on some people). But it's all good. A surprise indeed, and a good time was had.

This morning the local weekly paper had a big article on Post Traumatic Stress Disorder for people coming back from Iraq. It was interesting (though reading it brought up some memories) and it also let me see that there are some folks in WAY worse shape than me. I feel bad for them as I have an idea what they went through and how they feel, but from what I read they're having a much harder time of it than I did. Then again, some of them were out there shooting people, which of course I didn't have to do. I mostly smiled and waved at kids.

Reading it made me think more about the therapist I talked with the other day. He spent more time talking than I did, which is unfortunate since the only reason I went to him was I felt I needed to talk with someone. He focused on one particular incident, almost as if he was trying to find a reason to diagnose me with PTSD, whereas I think my issues were a result of some other stuff. Oh, well, I'll do his little exercises and see what comes of it.

Tonight we're going out to dinner (gotta get out so folks can come look at the house) and then tomorrow morning we're having brunch with friends (I'm making Crab Cakes Benedict, because they are so yummy). And then I have dance class. And then I will do my work for Monday's classes. And then, and then, and then...and then I'm likely to have a martini. Because they, too, are yummy.

It's time to get to bed and get some sweet lovin' but first I should mention that all the hard work we've been doing on the house (and that has kept me off my journal for almost a week) is getting ready to pay off. We met with the real estate agents today who will be handling our house and after seeing it they agreed we should offer it at the high end of the price scale and they also feel it will sell quickly. Though I may have just jinxed myself by saying that, it felt good to hear. They really liked the color scheme throughout the house (some of which is visible on my website's "About Me" page) which was a real tribute to Adrian's sense of style because he's really the one who chose the bold colors we painted 3 years ago. more importantly, it means they don't think we need to paint the whole inside of the damn house, which is good to know because we are NOT in the mood for that.

Not much more than house stuff has been happening this week. A lady from work who was interested in looking at the house flaked out on me but couldn't be bothered to tell me she and her husband weren't coming to see it, so we worked hard to be ready for them last Saturday for nothing. We made up for it Sunday morning with a wonderful brunch at a 5-star resort here, which was a birthday present from my mom last January. I had dance class Sunday afternoon where I realized once again that I really should have started this, oh, 25 years ago, but it's OK 'cuz I'm loving it. And I've been busting my ass to get stuff done at work, but that's nothing new.

The one unusual thing this week was that I had an appointment with a therapist to talk about some issues arising from my time in Iraq last year. When I got back from working over there I had a touch of the ol' Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, but the symptoms had pretty much faded by the end of the year. They started popping up again in February -- dreams, sudden images popping into my head, some occasional emotions coming out when the subject if Iraq comes up (which is awkward when you're a professor teaching national security policy -- it's kind of a big topic). Anyway, I don't have enough symptoms to be classified as PTSD, I just have some anxiety which he says is normal because first, I just had the one-year anniversary of coming home and anniversaries are important to the mind, and second, with the new job coming soon in DC, buying a new home, and trying to sell this one, I was pretty vulnerable to stress, so it's no suprise this came up when it did. He gave me some simple exercises to try and I'll see him again next week. It's no big deal, but since it's the first time I've ever talked to a professional therapist, it's interesting to me.

I'm a tired pup. Time to go to bed and get kissed. G'night!

Yes, we went to a bluegrass show tonight. It was in a small little community center a few miles from here. Now, I've been known to enjoy a little bluegrass music from time to time (my roots are in southwest Virginia, after all) but it's not normally Adrian's style. But my folks are big fans of this group back home, I've been hearing about them for 15 years and hear them on Prairie Home Companion a lot (and they'll be in the Prairie Home movie this summer), but have never seen them live, so when they happened to roll into our town we of course had to go. It was a great show, about 3 hours long and totally unpretentious. A little different from, say, a Cher concert.

Adrian brought the average age down quite a bit. He was also one of only two non-white people there. So yeah, bluegrass is probably an old white person kind of thing, and I hope that last night wasn't my first step toward being an old white guy.

We both enjoyed it a lot, the band was really good, and we met them afterwards (they know my parents, so it was the polite thing to do).

Now I'm waiting to see if Adrian starts playing any of the bluegrass songs in my iTunes.

Still not amusing and insightful, but at least a little better rested. Oh, and I have a paper cut on one finger so forgive me if I type a little slowly.

More work done on the house the last couple days. Adrian cleaned out the garage yesterday and it looks much, much better. Today I had some painters come to do an estimate of what it would take to make the outside look pretty, and though it is more than I would like to pay, it will make the place look better and sell faster, and that's kind of important when you've already bought your new home before selling the old one.

Tonight our friends Lisa and Sue came over to help us install new floors in two of our bathrooms. I am SO glad we have good friends who like to work on houses. Tonight, though, it was Adrian who was the genius, not only fixing up one bathroom beautifully but then fixing mistakes one of the ladies made in the other one. This place is looking so much better, I kind of wish we had done this work earlier so we could enjoy it longer. Oh, well, lesson learned for the next place.

I'm in the midst of grading my last exams here. One of my classes doesn't have a final exam, and the other has a multiple-choice test that will be graded by the computer, so the midterm exam I am grading now should be my last one. Sure, I will have quizzes and papers to grade between now and the end, but this is the last actual exam. Hey, it's not a big milestone, but I will take my small accomplishments wherever I can find them.

By the way, I still hate grading, just in case anyone was wondering. Hate it with a passion.

I was hoping to write something very amusing and insightful tonight but I have gotten very little sleep the last two nights so I have to go to bed so that I do not fall asleep in my class tomorrow (very embarassing when you are the professor).

But I will say that I am very excited about this.

Oh, and, I found my pants today. So, yay that.

I had in mind a wonderful April Fools' Day post, involving the lottery, panda bears, and a windmill. But then I realized that more and more of the six people reading this journal live overseas and might not have the custom of April Fools' Day, and since I didn't want to have to explain it I just had some wine and watched a basketball game instead.

(Goluboy, on the other hand, had a wonderful April Fools' Day website up, so convincing that I e-mailed him to express my concern, only to have him remind me of the date)

Today was basketball day here because the school where I got my PhD, George Mason University, was in the NCAA Final Four, an unexpected underdog that had knocked off the best teams in the country. Unfortunately they lost tonight so they won't be playing for the national championship Monday, but they have already accomplished one incredible thing: they've made it possible for me to wear my GMU hat around this small Colorado city without people asking "where's that?"

We watched Memento tonight and I told Adrian what I would like him to do in case I ever have short-term memory problems like that. He said, "what makes you think you DON'T have them now?"

Great. Now I'm not going to sleep tonight.

Or have I already said that?